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A New Way of Seeing Viral Sharing

It can be difficult to really understand how online content goes viral. Sometimes a well developed video will sit in one corner of the internet while some random cat video gets shared across the globe. What makes or breaks a viral success is quite often a mystery to even the pros.

It turns out that most people get so wrapped up in the content itself, they rarely pay attention to the process of social sharing and how much control they have. If you’re looking to change your luck with viral sharing, the first place to start is how you look at the big picture. Recent research in viral sharing has revealed two important things. First, viral sharing is made up of several stages that are similar to how viruses spread in nature. Second, there are several steps users can take at each stage to increase the chance of success.

Like in nature, viral sharing is a basic process of infecting people. People are exposed to content when they view it. People infect others when they decide to share the content. The basic version of this process goes like this:

Content gets created

Content is seeded (posted online)

Users view the content

Users share the content

The repetition of steps 3 and 4 is what create a viral sensation. Having this kind of big picture view, here’s four things you can do to make your content more sharable:

Since creating content is often the biggest focus for content developers, it can be difficult to start paying attention to the bigger picture. The following is a simple list of tools that can help you with the bigger picture by monitoring the social space you’re active in.

Tools to find influencers: Klout/Kred/Followerwonk – these tools will help you find the people who are most influential in your space. These are people you can slowly try to work with when spreading your content, and generally participating within your content space.

Tools to monitor social reach/analytics: Google Analytics/Social Mention/Whos Talkin – these tools will give you a sense of your social media’s performance on the web. The social search engines can also be useful in researching the viral content of other sites/brands.

If you have any additional tools you’ve found to be helpful, share them in the comments below.